ABOUT FIDEL CASTRO

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban communist revolutionary and

politician who was Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and
President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the Commander in Chief
of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces from 1959 to 2008, and as the
First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from 1961 until 2011.
Politically a Marxist-Leninist, under his administration the Republic of
Cuba became a one-party socialist state; industry and businesses were
nationalized, and socialist reforms implemented in all areas of society.
Internationally, Castro was the Secretary-General of the Non-Aligned
Movement, from 1979 to 1983 and from 2006 to 2008.
The illegitimate son of a wealthy farmer, Castro adopted leftist anti-
imperialist politics while studying law at the University of Havana. After
participating in rebellions against right-wing governments in the
Dominican Republic and Colombia, he planned the overthrow of the
United States-backed military junta of Cuban president Fulgencio Batista,
and served a year's imprisonment in 1953 after a failed attack on the
Moncada Barracks. On release he traveled to Mexico, where he formed a
revolutionary group with his brother Raúl and friend Che Guevara, the
26th of July Movement. Returning to Cuba, Castro led the Cuban
Revolution which ousted Batista in 1959, and brought his own
assumption of military and political power. Alarmed by his revolutionary
credentials and friendly relations with the Soviet Union, the U.S.
governments of Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy
unsuccessfully attempted to remove him, by economic blockade,
assassination and counter-revolution, including the Bay of Pigs invasion
of 1961. Countering these threats, Castro formed an economic and
military alliance with the Soviets, and allowed them to place nuclear
weapons on the island, sparking the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.